


there calls a hound

by deniigiq



Series: Selkie Verse [4]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Daredevil (TV), Hawkeye (Comics)
Genre: Dogs, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Selkies, as in Lucky is a very good boy until he is a very bad boy, exchanges gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:17:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21891067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “A trade’s a trade. I’ll get it fixed,” JB promised. “I know some guys.”“No leprechauns,” Foggy snapped.JB’s face flickered.“I know some other guys,” he said.(Bucky Barnes comes to Foggy with an unusual request.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Clint Barton, James "Bucky" Barnes & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: Selkie Verse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558045
Comments: 9
Kudos: 327





	there calls a hound

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to write this for a while now! 
> 
> For reference, for info on a _cú sidhe_ , see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%B9-s%C3%ACth  
> (there is a Scottish version of this too, but the English version is more of Black Dog thing.) 
> 
> Info on Tailypo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailypo

“I’m sorry?” Foggy said, now regretting not leaving his office door cracked.

“I just—” JB cut himself off and flicked his eyes at the door behind him before hunkering forward and waving Foggy over with him.

Foggy fought with every lick of sense in himself not to follow the guy’s beckoning.

“I just heard that you might know how to help a guy out with this kind of thing,” JB murmured. “That’s all that I heard. And so I was wondering if maybe you could, uh, help _this_ guy out.”

Foggy chewed his lips and decided lightly that he was going to have to strangle Danny with kelp and leave his body to be eaten by fish under a load of quickly-sourced rocks to quell his snitching habits.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about this time, JB,” he said as kindly as he could. “I’m not one of you Avengers-folk or some kind of ancient scholar or something. My specialty is criminal law and—”

JB’s forehead smoothed out while he listened to this and Foggy found his voice trailing off slowly.

“Um?” he said.

“Nelson, do I look like an idiot to you?”

“Ooh, trust me, you don’t want the answer to that one. It’s really the hair that does it if I’m hon—”

“ _Nelson_.”

Right, right. Nervous chatter. Serious conversation. Stopping now.

JB sighed and held his face between his palms.

“Listen, man,” he said. “I respect you. I see what you’re doing out here and I see who you’re doing it with, and like, you two are adorable, pal. Really adorable. But you’d have to be blinder than your friend out there to not be able to see what’s really going on here.”

Foggy swallowed.

“Which is?” he asked, kind of already hating the answer.

JB flicked suddenly mismatching eyes up at him.

One was gold.

Oh dear god. Why here? Why now?

“I need your help, Nelson. As a selkie, I need your help,” JB said. “And you _cannot_ tell Steve I asked you for it.”

Foggy could feel the hair on the base of his neck trying to stand up. He shivered, then groaned and pressed his forehead against the hard, cold wood of his desk.

“Was it Danny?” he asked.

“It was,” JB said with the sound of smile in it.

“Fuck.”

JB was a _c_ _ú sidhe_ , he said, and ever since waking up from the soldier conditioning, he’d recovered more and more of the urge to reap.

Which was to be expected. Reaping was kind of the entire purpose of the _c_ _ú sidhe_.

What was less expected was the fact that the guy had woken up and realized abruptly that all them doggy urges were stuck.

He was stuck.

He couldn’t shift.

Now, boy, did that sound fuckin’ familiar.

“This is your fault,” Foggy told Matt as he watched him roll around all over the new duvet like a happy otter.

Matt stopped and sat up in question. Foggy glared and noted that his lip had split again which was exactly the thing that had caused the old duvet to be replaced with the new duvet. He grabbed Matt’s chin before he could throw himself back down onto the covers and stain them with blood.

“Your fault,” he repeated in the kitchen with a bottle of antiseptic at hand and Matt making a lot of noise in the general area of ‘it’s _fine_ , it doesn’t hurt, stop doing that.’

“I didn’t even do anything,” Matt whined once a photo of his lip had been submitted to Claire Temple for evaluation.

Foggy ignored him to tap at his phone.

“Foggyyyyyy.”

“I’m busy. Go be dramatic elsewhere.”

“ _Foggyyyyy_.”

Foggy rolled his eyes and turned off his phone. He made a point of swiveling his head Matt’s way with enough drama that he could feel it.

Matt beamed at him and cracked that fucking lip again.

“I love you. Tell me what I did, I’ll fix it,” Matt said.

Uh-huh.

Sweet-talker.

“Barnes wants me to fix one of his problems,” Foggy finally said.

“So nothing new,” Matt translated.

“Different kind of problem,” Foggy sighed.

Matt cocked his head and waited patiently.

“He’s a _c_ _ú sidhe_ ,” Foggy blurted out. “But he’s stuck. Can’t shift. Like you.”

Matt blinked a couple of times in surprise.

“A _c_ _ú sidhe_?” he repeated.

“That’s what I said.”

“Like, a real one?”

“He’s got the eyes for it.”

Matt fell quiet as he processed what was going on here.

“Whoops,” he said. “Sorry Fogs, sounds like this is kind of my fault.”

Damn right it was.

UGH.

“A national icon now knows I’m a selkie,” Foggy said. “He’ll hold that secret so long as I help him with his. He said not to tell Steve Rogers.”

Matt stared past Foggy’s shoulder. Foggy stiffened.

“Matty. Matty, what are you thinking?”

Matt smiled wide and bright.

“Matthew, don’t you fuckin’—MATT.”

It was too late. He was already out the window.

Fuck.

Well, so there went that plan.

Steve Rogers was sure to know everything by dawn, and the only upside to that was that _technically_ Foggy hadn’t told him jack shit.

The downside was that JB would now know that Daredevil was a whole lot closer to Foggy than he’d probably expected.

Matt, _why_?

Sometimes, Foggy wished that he could just cram Matt’s mood-stabilizers down his throat in a meat ball like a dog. That would make both of their lives far, far easier, but alas. Matt was more interested in hiding his stabilizers and antidepressants than he was in taking them.

He thought he was good at it, too, except that he often forgot a key piece of the puzzle here, which was that Foggy was sighted. This meant that stuffing a bunch of bright white pills in a black beanie on his or Foggy’s table was only one person’s idea of stealth in their household.

Exhausting.

But equally exhausting was the other looming problem Foggy now had to contend with.

 _C_ _ú sidhe_ were not exactly known for their patience. When souls were not forthcoming to them, they just went out and made more of them. Three bays from a _c_ _ú sidhe_ and anyone who didn’t find shelter was theirs.

Buck wasn’t exactly the type of guy to go out and make souls just because he wanted them, Foggy knew this. JB had been displacing people’s souls from their bodies at the behest of others for nearly a century. He was probably sickened now at the thought of doing that for himself.

But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t dangerous and it certainly would behoove Foggy to keep him on his side of things for as long as possible.

Matt was susceptible to the call of a _c_ _ú sidhe_ as long as he was half-human.

If Barnes ever found his soul out wandering unattended at night before Foggy did, that could lead to some trouble. The last thing Matt wanted was to be shepherded off to the human afterlife by a giant hound. He’d throw a shitfit and then Foggy would have to throw a shitfit because Matt’s soul was _his_ to shepherd. He’d gotten there first.

Foggy didn’t want to have to throw down with a _c_ _ú sidhe_ , especially not one of Barnes’s caliber.

He was not winning that fight. There wasn’t a chance in hell.

But all he knew about the _c_ _ú sidhe_ was that they were spirit reapers. He’d run into maybe two in his time, one of which had mistaken him as a human child laying out on the shore and had tried to reap his soul like, four times before storming over and realizing that they were trying to reap the soul of a seal pup.

Dad would always find comedy in this story, which was good for him because all Foggy remembered of it was flopping over, trying to catch a snail, and looking up into the gold and silver eyes of a _c_ _ú sidhe_ who’d seemed the size of a mountain.

The thing had been furious--and the local librarian, which was fun.

Foggy was told that he’d made a very good case for himself (i.e. he’d rolled over and been adorable) and so Mrs. Sampson had decided to spare him from the punishment preferred by her people (a thorough snapping-at), but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have trauma over the whole thing.

Matt certainly had none. Foggy doubted he’d ever encountered one here in the city.

God. Foggy needed to know what Matt was telling Cap.

But first he needed a spell.

Bess Mahoney was a lovely river selkie who had been given the rather unfortunate lot of having Brett Mahoney as her human child. Luckily for Foggy, she was a selkie-elder in this area, unluckily for Brett, she was a selkie-elder in this area.

Foggy made sure to smile at him extra wide when he opened the door to his mom’s house.

Brett closed it immediately.

Foggy knocked again.

About a thirty seconds later, Bess opened it, scolding Brett over her shoulder.

Bess said that the _c_ _ú sidhe_ needed to find another one of his people to ask. Bess only knew spells for breaking curses brought on by the sea.

That was fair, although somewhat unhelpful.

Foggy couldn’t just give JB a ‘go talk to your own species.’ That would not be well received.

He needed something a little more tangible, so Bess sent him down to the train crossing to get a talisman from her Tailypo friend.

Foggy got back to Matt’s apartment at nearly two in the morning and caught him in the act of dripping blood on the duvet.

Matt was removed to the bathroom.

His lip received a stitch.

He was then subjected to a shower and an interrogation which revealed that he’d gotten halfway to Brooklyn before getting distracted by Jessica, who was out that way, chasing a guy through a maze of chain link fences, and obviously Matt couldn’t have resisted that.

So to add to the split lip, Matt now had a super cool chain link fence pattern of bruises on his back.

He was very pleased with himself. When he was sentenced to bed rest, Foggy hid his mask in the trunk with his coat.

Foggy called JB when he got into the office the next day and passed over to him Bess’s advice and an invitation to come around to collect the Tailypo’s talisman.

It was a black stone with a hole in the middle. A red silk ribbon had been threaded through it.

“From a what now?” JB said a few hours later, swinging the thing back and forth in front of his eyes.

“A Tailypo,” Foggy said. “Long ears, big eyes, long claws—swamp creature. Very regal. This one was at least. You should be thankful. I had to give him a tooth for it.” 

JB stuffed the talisman into his jacket pocket.

“What’ll you have in return?” he asked.

Foggy had not expected this. He’d expected JB to flash those mineral eyes at him again, thank him gruffly, and then leave.

But now that he mentioned it.

“Dude.”

“Save it. You asked, I answered.”

“Dude,” JB repeated, wincing at the tambourine as he turned it around in his hands. “This thing might be older than me.”

Foggy made to snatch his poor battered and peeling tambourine back to save it from further insult, but JB clutched the thing to his chest.

Foggy narrowed his eyes.

“A trade’s a trade. I’ll get it fixed,” JB promised. “I know some guys.”

“No leprechauns,” Foggy snapped.

JB’s face flickered.

“I know some other guys,” he said.

“No ribbons, either,” Foggy warned. “It’s goat skin. Oak around the base; brass jingles. Don’t be lettin’ anyone paint it—it ain’t for paint, you hear? ‘Specially not any toxic leprechaun shit.”

JB’s mouth twisted.

“What’s with you and the leprechauns?” he asked.

“None of your business. Get out of here, hound,” Foggy said. “I’ve had enough of you.”

JB’s twisting mouth settled into a grin.

“Thanks, Nelson,” he said. “Everyone did say you were an upstanding guy.”

Wait.

Who the fuck was everyone?

Danny _claimed_ that he’d only told JB, but Foggy didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. And he was right in that because Jess very helpfully remembered Danny mentioning Foggy to a handful of guys at a _fae_ ale house that Jess took him to, to get him away from Luke’s waning patience and thereafter drunk and quiet for once.

She was not sorry, but she did tell Foggy that Danny’s new drinking friends, two merrows, had already heard of him prior to Danny bringing up his name.

“They said some gal named Bess talked you up on the coast,” Jess said.

Foggy’s hands itched for a piece of concrete to whack his head against.

On the one hand, he was beyond flattered and proud that an elder of Bess’s prestige would mention his name as someone worthy of praise, but on the other hand: Bess. Come _on_. He had a cover to keep up here. If the _fae_ knew where he was and what he did and worse, if they knew that Matt was a hero with impulse control issues, the two of them would be doing nothing but _fae_ business for the rest of eternity. Or at least until Matt kicked it and Foggy could finally, _finally_ drag both of them back to the Old Country, where he fully intended to amass a herd of pups and force Matt to entertain them.

He was trying to lay low until that day.

Trying really, _really_ hard.

He sighed into his hands. Jess watched him dispassionately.

“If one of my kind’s elders ever said anything nice about me in public, I’d drop dead,” she said.

Foggy sighed even harder.

He had two days of peace post-Danny-intimidating.

Matt broke his arm during it around the same time he fell on a needle. The doctor tested him for every communicable disease under the sun, jabbed him with a thousand different, medically approved needles, wrapped his arm up in a piece of plaster so infuriating to Matt that he starting trying to break it as soon as the man left the room, and then prescribed Matt a set of painkillers, along with an order to ‘take it easy.’

Matt was to come back in a month to have the cast removed.

He found no solace in Foggy’s arms following that hospital journey and transferred his hulking aura of despair over to Karen, who found a drop of sympathy to muster up for him.

Foggy told her that this was encouraging bad behavior. She claimed that she didn’t have a foot to stand on. And like.

Okay, that was fair.

He’d let them be insufferable humans together for the time being. At least with Matt trying to type at Karen’s desk, he could interfere with the grimoire reading when it made itself known.

On the third day post-Danny-menacing, JB showed up looking sheepish.

Foggy didn’t like it.

JB closed his office door and settled down into the seat across from Foggy. He refused to look him in the eye.

“If this is even tangentially related to a leprechaun, I’m throwing you out,” Foggy warned.

“Not leprechauns,” JB admitted, squirming. “More like. Er.”

Foggy waited. He could feel the hair on his scalp prickling.

“So,” JB said, leaning forward onto his elbows. “I—hm.” He rubbed at his mouth.

Foggy set his elbows on his desk and folded his hands over his own lips seriously. JB still didn’t meet his eye.

“You know Hawkeye, don’t you Nelson?” JB asked.

Yes, Foggy knew Hawkeye. In fact, he knew both Hawkeyes. Separately even. They both _loved_ to be hurled in jail for the kind of offenses that would make a mother weep.

“Right, of course you do,” JB said. He cleared his throat.

“Mr. Barnes,” Foggy said carefully, “What does Hawkeye have to do with my flute?”

He got nothing but avoidance.

He set his hands down on the table and made his own eyes revert to silver.

“Mr. Barnes,” he repeated dangerously. “If Hawkeye’s mutt has so much as _licked_ my flute, I cannot promise that the creature will remain to the land of the living after I’m through with him. So I _hope_ , for your sake, his sake, and my own sake, that that is not even remotely related to what you have to tell me right now.”

JB stood up.

“I’ll get it back,” he swore.

Mother _fucker_.

MOTHERFUCKER.

“Oh, hey Nelson,” Barton said easily.

Lucky wagged his goddamn tail. As he did, the jingles on Foggy’s tambourine rang lightly.

“What’re you doing here?” Barton asked. “You see this thing JB brought ‘round? Lucky loves it. Never seen him—uh.”

Foggy felt cold. JB edged away from him with hands pressed together.

“Spare him?” he asked. “He’s almost too stupid to live?”

“I’m hearing ‘drown him,’” Foggy said.

“I did say ‘spare.’ 100% sure I said ‘spare,’” JB said.

“Dude,” Barton said. “Did you just threaten to drown my dog?”

Foggy stared at him. The fury felt like ice. Barton took a step back.

“Nelson?” he asked. “You okay there, buddy?”

“If you value your animal, you will appropriate my fucking flute from his goddamn mouth before I do it for you and take some of his teeth with it,” Foggy said as calmly as he could manage.

“Flute?” Barton said. “Uh? Friend? That’s a—”

“A flute, Barton,” JB said miserably. “Just—just go with it. And uh, get the Luck-meister to give it back. Please.”

Lucky, bored with the conversation happening around him, shook Foggy’s tambourine violently. Foggy felt his heart lurch at the sight of it.

“Woah,” Barton said. “Is he—Buck, is he--?”

“Clint, he will literally kill your dog, so for real, make him give it back.”

“Holy shit, Nelson, I didn’t—WOAH, WOAH, WOAH. Ease up, man.”

Lucky returned Foggy’s threatening snarl and tried to bark around the tambourine in his mouth. Foggy wrinkled his nose at the fucking audacity of the gesture.

He could end this pathetic animal in a sink. That it thought it could growl at him was absurd and an act of undisguised hubris. It was only the feeling of a hand pushing against his chest that brought him back from the freezing cold taking over him.

He did not bite it. But just barely.

“Dude, you need to chillax,” Barton said. “He’s a dog. He just likes the smell of it, that’s all.”

Foggy rounded on him with a fury he hadn’t felt since Candace had stolen his coat for show and tell when they were kids.

“I will curse you and your entire family—your entire bloodline, Barton, if this does not stop immediately,” he said.

Barton blinked and flicked his eyes over to JB who winced and shook his head firmly.

“O…kay,” Barton said. “Let me, uh, get some gloves.”

Lucky had to be chased through the apartment building, then through a handful of alleys and up a fire-escape before he could be cornered by the upstairs tenants’ kitchen trashcans.

Foggy was livid.

His tambourine had never had such scratches. Such toothmarks.

The disgrace was literally tangible.

And Lucky was a stubborn bastard. He hadn’t given the tambourine up the night previous and he was unwilling to give it up, even in the face of its rightful owner.

“I’m so sorry, Nelson,” JB said. “I’ll have it fixed. I swear. It’ll look better than new.”

Foggy didn’t want new. He’d wanted polished. He’d wanted the head tightened and oiled. The last thing he wanted was new.

“I’m, uh. I’ll raise the exchange?” JB offered. “Is there anything I could give you to make up for the, er, emotional damage?”

Yeah, a one-way trip back home and a fleet of pups who would respect Foggy and who’d never do such infuriating damage to any selkie’s flute.

“Why’s he keep calling it a flute?” Barton murmured to JB when he thought Foggy couldn’t hear anything through the furious vibes he was sending towards Lucky and his goddamn click-clacking nails.

“Selkies call all their instruments flutes,” JB whispered back.

“Right. Cool. Hey, what’s a—”

“Clint, shut _up_. I’m trying to do something here. We’ll talk later.”

Barton pouted and crossed his arms over his chest. He put his weight back on one heel and moved his jaw.

“How about this,” JB started. “I’ll give you—”

“I gave a tooth for you,” Foggy snapped at him. “Now I want one of yours.”

JB cringed. Barton’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

“A tooth?” he repeated.

Foggy rounded on him in silence.

“I’ll have one of yours, too,” he said. “For the insult.”

Barton refused to give up a tooth. In lieu of that, Foggy took Lucky’s collar, ripped the tags off and rifled through all of Clint’s cabinets to find a clear Tupperware box. He cranked the sink’s handles and dropped the full box in front of Lucky, then sat down cross-legged in front of him and dunked the collar into the Tupperware. He let it sink to the bottom and stared deep into Lucky’s eyes.

Lucky crept forward. Foggy showed him his teeth.

Lucky crept forward again.

“Barton, your dog is so stupid, it’s shocking,” JB sighed.

Lucky waddled over and licked Foggy’s face through the growling. Then he dunked his dumbass head into the water and snatched his collar out. He was sprinting off into the recesses of Clint’s bedroom before Foggy could catch him.

Foggy thought about chasing him but decided that Lucky’s head was practically Teflon--even putting the fear of the surging sea into him wasn’t going to stick. He opted instead for collecting his nasty tambourine and turning his sights back onto Barnes.

“This cannot be happening,” Barton said.

Foggy said nothing at all. He didn’t care what the others thought of this. The roiling sea in his chest would not be sated until the insult to his flute was amended. He would hear no human complaints until then.

“Just go with it,” JB said nudging the pliers into Barton’s hand.

“How about not?” Barton said, yanking his hand away. “Is this a kink? Nelson, is this your kink?”

“I’ve delivered drowned children and sailors to their afterlives,” Foggy said in the way of his people. “I’ve shepherded the shipwrecked, the suicidal, and the would-be murdered back to shore against the desires of the depths. And for millennia, my people have guided the spirits of the sea and island to the Otherworld on _Samhain_ , but never, in my whole life, have I been so flagrantly disrespected like this.”

He stared at JB and let the weight of the quiet fill in the gaps between them.

“I’m sorry,” JB said carefully. “And I swear I’ll make things right.”

“My grandmother left me that flute,” Foggy told him.

“I’m sorry, Nelson, I really am. It was careless of me,” JB said.

“Everyone’s always telling me to offer it back for a bodhrán,” Foggy mused. “Keep saying that people don’t use tambourines anymore in the music of the island, but every time I say, ‘no. That’s was Nan’s flute, and it is an _honor_ to carry it in her stead.’”

Foggy stood up.

“I’ll receive your apology by dawn,” he said. He snatched the damaged tambourine from the coffee table. “I wish you good luck in your endeavors, but I’m afraid that you’ll have to follow your elders, Mr. Barnes, not mine.”

“That’s more than fair,” JB said. “Sorry for the trauma, Franklin.”

Foggy paused in the doorway and turned back to him.

“Foggy,” he said.

JB recoiled a little in surprise.

“Don’t get familiar,” Foggy said. “I just reserve that name for my mate.”

“Foggy,” JB repeated. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Foggy. Thank you for the help you’ve given me. Us—Barton included.”

Barton appeared to be in a bit of a wide-eyed daze.

Foggy nodded, then took himself off to catch a train. 

Matt was furious on his behalf. It took Foggy grabbing him around the waist and dragging him back into his chair at the kitchen table to keep him from setting off to go pick a fight with JB right then and there.

In the moments after being replaced in his seat, Matt seemed to sense Foggy’s disheartenment. He felt for the tambourine on the table and traced his fingers over it, finding the new scratches and indentations in the wood. His hands went still and he lifted his head.

“We can fix it,” he said.

“Maybe I should just get a bodhrán,” Foggy sighed. “They’re easier to fix.”

“No, we can fix it,” Matt said. “Gimme a shot, Fogs.”

Foggy wasn’t sure he wanted to. The thing had already seen enough trouble. More than it had in decades in just a few hours.

He wanted it to rest.

“Foggy?”

He sighed and left Matt to make a cup of tea.

“Just be careful with it, Matty,” he said.

Matt took his hands off the drum head. Foggy could practically hear his determination in his breathing.

“This is a tooth,” Karen informed Foggy of the thing wrapped in muslin cloth on the main office’s desk the next morning. Matt made a pleased noise and abandoned Foggy’s arm to go have a poke at it.

“Not just any tooth,” he said, setting his cane down next to the desk and picking the tooth and its cloth up.

“A tooth of a _c_ _ú sidhe_ ,” Foggy said.

Karen had nothing. She waited.

“Big scary grim reaper dog,” Matt told her. “The _c_ _ú sidhe_ collects the souls of the dead and walks them to their afterlives. It bays at night and you can hear it for miles. And if you don’t find shelter by the third bay, you’ll die of terror and join the _c_ _ú sidhe_ ’s flock.”

Karen stepped away from the tooth and from Matt holding it further and further into her space.

“It’s harmless right now,” Foggy told her. “It can be used for all sorts of things, though. You can powder it into a poison or turn it into an amulet to walk among the dead. Some make them into buttons to confuse reapers if they’re out on the moors, or they tie them to their weak children to ensure a _c_ _ú sidhe_ will carry them off quickly and safely to the afterlife. They’re good for all sorts. You just need to match them with the right plants.”

Karen glanced at the tooth and then Foggy.

“Why’d this thing give it to you, then?” she asked.

Foggy scowled.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” he said.

“Foggy gave one of his teeth for an amulet,” Matt told Karen. “He’s got a gap. It’ll take ages for a new one to grow.”

Karen needed to see this gap. Foggy’s patience felt thinner than it had in months with her poking around his mouth.

“What are selkie teeth good for?” she asked Matt excitedly as Foggy retreated to his office with JB’s cleaned tooth.

“Murder,” Matt said firmly.

Karen squeaked.

“Sometimes good fortune for sailors,” Matt added casually. “But mostly murder.”

Foggy sighed.

“Not murder, Karen,” he called.

“Like, triple homicide,” Matt insisted.

The tambourine came home a week later smelling like wood polish and leather. The drum head was pale. The toothmarks and scratches were lightly sanded over and gleaming.

Foggy appreciated the decision to leave them there.

They were battle scars now. Signs of deals made and gone wrong. Lessons learned.

“We’re not dealing with reapers anymore,” Matt decided, tapping lightly at the drumhead and pouting at the sound.

Foggy shook it at him to make him jump.

“Agreed,” he said. “Too much trouble.”

“You think Cap knows yet?” Matt asked, trying to steal the tambourine. Foggy tucked it up against his chest.

“Well if he doesn’t, I imagine he’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

Matt snickered.

“Drama,” he said.

“Thy name is Murdock,” Foggy sniffed at him.

Matt giggled.

“Go rest your arm,” Foggy snapped at him.

“Make me.”

“I’m going out.”

“I’m coming.”

“No, you’re not. Doctor’s orders. Shoo. Bed. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

Matt pouted.

Foggy took the new tambourine out to the docks and found a nice quiet spot out there to tap at it a bit. It sounded clean. It felt lighter. He could only imagine how many decades of grim had been scrubbed from it.

He gave it a good shake and then scooted forward to dip it into the water.

It was river water, but it would find its way back to the sea.

Nan would know that he’d made amends over her beloved flute.

He lifted the drum and let the water drip off the brass and polished wood. He shook it hard, then lighter and lighter. Then he tapped the drum head twice.

“May the _c_ _ú sidhe_ bay once more,” he whispered. “Take this beat as an offering.”

He gave another two taps and decided that that was enough.

Bucky Barnes would find his way home. He’d done it before and he would do it again.


End file.
